Rural kinders won't benefit from Labor funding promise

Small rural kindergartens across the state are saying they're struggling to remain open, particularly after the Federal Government stipulated that every four-year-old must attend 15 hours of kindergarten a week by 2013.

Funding is currently allocated from state and federal governments on a per-child basis, rather than per kindergarten and many smaller communities are saying there's a huge shortfall.

"You have to do massive fund raising; you have to appeal to people in the community to do grain drives, to do sheep drives... You know there's only so much you can do," Vice-president of Willaura and District Kindergarten Amanda Kumnick said.

"If we look at it, they're announcing these 10,000 places, but what about the 1600 places that we're going to lose when all these kinders shut?"

The funding announced by Labor today is for capital works on kindergartens, which Minister for Child and Early Childhood Development Maxine Morand acknowledged will mainly benefit city kindergartens struggling to cope with the burgeoning population.

"In the small towns that's not really the pressure... but, the small rural kindergartens, we know that there's pressure on them because of the smaller numbers of children and to try to respond to that we do fund small rural kindergartens substantially more per individual place."

Minister Morand said the government is conducting a review of the whole funding model, in response to the Federal Government's universal access policy.

"When the Commonwealth announced this commitment we did say that there would be no additional cost to parents... so there will be more funding per child to ensure that the additional five hours can be delivered."

Amanda Kumnick says kindergartens can't wait for a review.

"I understand that they say that they're thinking about it, but we're faced with massive problems that we have to deal with right now."

"We can't wait two years 'til 2013, we won't be around then."

She says the answer is simple.

"We have a solution: Pay the teachers."

"We already have a categorisation of small rural kinder, there are 80 of us and we all have a staff member who's paid around the same... It's $2.5 million a year, that's the funding that's required."